


Allotrope

by Navi (RaineyAndDraery)



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dark Comedy, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:42:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23896984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaineyAndDraery/pseuds/Navi
Summary: Elliott is destroyed by his mother's sudden death, and while the Apex games are on a short hiatus for 'unknown reasons', he begins to fall apart. Alongside his grief, he's plagued by increasingly horrific dreams, and someone suspects foul play. The games descend into madness at a rapid pace, and by the time aforementioned someone uncovers the truth, it may be a little late for a whole myriad of problems to be properly solved.
Relationships: Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Mirage | Elliott Witt
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	1. Restraints

**Author's Note:**

> From the beginning forward, chapters will increase in length. This may stay consistent.  
> What won't stay consistent, however, is my update speed.  
> Enjoy to the best of your ability.

In the corner of Elliott's peripheral, something black and eldrich writhes and throws itself against iron shackles that make no perceptible sound or indication of strain. He barely notices it, wouldn't even have, had he not been so blatantly aware of everything around him. The impure air, his uncertain, ragged breath, the slight tingle in his forearms as goosebumps settled atop his flesh. He tries to turn to get a better look at the thing, but the space around him seems to melt away as it passes his sight, so he has to stop and let his eyes settle back into his skull. They spin a bit in the space,  _ or lack thereof, _ aching at the strain. 

When he properly comes to a standstill, his ears pop as if released of pressure, and he opens his mouth to take in a shuttering, confused breath, face suddenly cold. 

But just as soon as the dream began was he then thrust into reality with little more to signify than his eyes snapping open in surprise. 

  
  


Never before had he woken up so suddenly. This makes his skin crawl. 

He closes his eyes again, ready to sink back into the soft lull of sleep (that he hadn't just experienced, so what was the point, really?) but something makes him stop dead. 

The quiet sound of a clock ticking to his far left, the creak of presumably ancient floorboards above his head, the hum of a fan blowing thin gusts of air against his exposed feet. 

He pulls the uncovered bits of himself under the blanket that seems far too thick than he was used to, and suddenly his thoughts come to a screeching halt in his hollow mind. 

He was back home. 

The revelation urged him to pull his body away from the intoxicatingly comfortable bed and peer around at his surroundings. 

Sure enough, they were all familiar in a way that made his face flush slightly with a warmth he hadn't felt in a long while. A warmth that felt decidedly right as his mind flooded with memories of his childhood. Smiling faces of innocent and frankly naive children, strong, calloused hands that were soft in a comforting way and the scratch of a sweater well-worn and familiar. He smiled to himself, nostalgia creeping through his veins and head languidly. 

Something rises to the surface of his bubbling thoughts, however. A warning perhaps? 

No, Elliott couldn't identify what it  _ was _ , because it escapes him as soon as he tries to focus on it. 

Weird. 

He spends a few more precious moments looking over the things in his old room, recalling bittersweet memories and smiling at old pictures even though they make his stomach sink.

But something still gnaws at the back of his head, teeth sharp and demanding, and he blinks a few times, confused. 

It was strange... he didn't remember the flight home. Or anything immediately preceding that. 

In fact, he didn't remember a lot of things. 

He, now startled and a bit confused, takes another look around the room. Everything seemed off, now that he gave it all a second glance with worried, searching eyes. Everything, and especially the photographs.

They warped the air around them visibly, and Elliott was suddenly aware that there were too many colours in everything he looked at, and that if he stared long enough, something in his eyes would start to crumble visibly. 

His vision darts to the picture of his family on his polished oak nightstand, and he finds that he can't see his mother's face. 

When he searches the vastness of his memories, he finds that he cannot remember his mother  _ at all _ . 

  
  


Elliott Witt wakes up with a strangled sound resembling nothing human, thrashing in his bedsheets. It takes him a while to free his constricted limbs, something he wouldn't care to admit, and when he does, a being within him flies out of his mouth. Something airy and unwanted. 

He looks around and decides that he must not be dreaming still, because he feels tethered to the ground and reality itself, and his head feels full with knowledge. 

He slides a cold, trembling hand over his upper face and falls back onto the bed with a slight bounce, wincing as his back pops in a rather unpleasant way. 

He instinctively looks over at his little electronic clock, but forces his gaze away, remembering he wasn't on a schedule for the time being. 

The knowledge did little to soothe his rapidly beating heart. The space behind his eyes starts to ache, and he decides on shoving his head into a pillow and praying for the sweetness of dreamless sleep. 

  
  


Somewhere, a couple of hundred feet away, in a room identical to Elliott's, a woman makes a gasping sound that quickly fades off into a dejected sigh. She attempts to silence the onslaught of pained noise with a hand over her mouth, but it does little against the shock and anguish threatening to spill over. 

She stands up abruptly, closing her laptop that had been adorned with a grim news article, and rushes out of her room in a panicked hurry. 

  
  


By the time Elliott falls into a trepid, uneasy sleep, the door to his room is being assaulted, and he's yanked harshly back into reality. 

"Wh- give me a second, alright?" He chokes out, throat full of phlegm. 

He yawns, which then turns into a short cough as he pulls himself wearily out of bed, scratching the dip of his back through his black tee as he pads timidly towards the door. 

Upon sliding open the entrance and seeing the assailant and the desperate look on her face, he opens his mouth and is allowed a single syllable before he's being stopped with breathy words and a distraught look. 

"Please let me in. I- there's something I need to-" She stops to gasp a bit; Elliott assumes she must have been in a rush, and he reaches out a cautious hand towards her own shaking one. 

She pulls it back harshly and Elliott instinctively takes a step backward. 

She gives him an apologetic look, but uses the space he left behind to let herself into his room, pressing past him and, presumably, sitting on his bed (if the creak of springs was anything to go off of). 

He closes the door, preparing a myriad of questions in his head as he spins on his heel. 

"Mirag-  _ Elliott," _ She begins, and she seems still breathless, despite having had plenty of time to catch her breath. 

Elliott decides maybe he should listen to her. 

"Did you- oh god, of course you didn't, you were  _ asleep _ . Elliott I uh-" She's tripping over her words and she seems to be in a hurry, so Elliott puts a hand up and attempts to meet her gaze with a soft, reassuring look. 

"Hey, Renee, just take a breath okay, I've got time." He pauses a moment before muttering out an "especially since everything got cancelled.." 

Instead of looking better, it seems that he somehow made it worse because she tears her gaze away to stare directly down at her feet, and her mouth twists up into something pained. Or more so, anyway. 

"Woah, hey, I'm sorry I didn't mean-" She cuts him off  _ again _ , and he's starting to get a little annoyed, but his selfish thoughts are cut off as she utters something that makes his heart drop to his feet and then some.

"Elliott it's your mother, she uh-" 

He already knows where it's going, but he still responds with a look of desperation. Something pleading directed towards her as if she had any control over the matter. 

"She- something  _ killed her" _

Somewhere, on the eastern side of a ship, dormant on the ground of an unnamed planet, a man lets out an anguished wail. 

  
  


On the complete opposite end of the ship, in a room emptied of trivial objects and bathed in dim blue light, a completely different man sits at a desk. 

To the left of him, a screen was flashing words at a rapid pace, illegible at best, and quite possibly seizure-inducing at worse. To his right, a stack of news articles all titled ridiculously, some with dog-eared pages, and others just missing chunks entirely. 

And front and center, a much larger screen than the former. It hardly changed in visuals, save for a few numbers displaying something statistical and hardly noticeable changing every few seconds. 

The man's fingers tap incessantly at a pad of paper in front of him, watching the numbers closely and holding a pen between the index and middle digits of his other hand. 

He hums lightly at something he's shown, scribbling numbers down quickly before glancing back up quickly. 

What appeared to be a notification was suddenly thrust into the middle of his screen. 

A warning, if the yellow triangles and bold exclamation points were anything to go by. 

He makes a dissatisfied noise and slides the pen and paper away, pushing a couple of the news articles to the ground. He hardly notices. 

Instead, he finds himself engrossed in something more fitting. The small icon for his inbox (that he regularly memory-wiped) displayed a single notification. Something that caught his eye. 

Generally, if he were to receive any sort of notifications, it would be in the form of messages from people he referred to only as 'allies', and those would come in stacks of four to eight at a time, as they would usually contain large swaths of information for him to sift through. 

So, of course, he clicks on it, curious. 

To his surprise, it was simply a link, sent by the email of a news outlet for the Apex games that he'd been subscribed to for a while. 

(No, he wasn't  _ that _ self-absorbed. Sometimes journalists had interesting information that he could potentially use to his advantage.) 

When he dares to follow the address, he's taken aback by the title of the article, and the picture directly under it. 

" _ Beloved Apex star's mother dies under mysterious circumstances _ " 

The image below was a gruesome one, to say the least. 

A woman lying in the middle of what appeared to be sawdust, darkened with what he could only assume was blood. Her chest was torn open, with some internals torn to shreds. The sheer amount of damage was somewhat disturbing. 

But what made the man reel back was something else. Her head was also practically torn right open, but instead of blood and gore, all he could see was a black, unoccupied cavity. Deep black veins were running out of the hole and down her mauled body, turning purple and blue in some places. Her mouth was opened in what looked to be a horrified scream, and it seemed that the corruption had also reached there because there was a black liquid dribbling down the corner of her mouth. 

The man blinks a few times, then saves the article, adding it to a folder on his desktop titled simply "8.fmly" 

  
  
  



	2. Remember Your Roots.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage has a bathroom sink in his bedroom and Crypto gets a blast from the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I formatted everything and made my notes and was ready to post and then fucking hit the back button. I am still fuming.  
> To sum it up, I don't know anything about the Apex lore, massive formatting issues even though I went through my writing to try and fix it all, yadayadayada.  
> Also a massive sorry to anyone who was excited for this, I have no excuse for this chapter coming out so late, I'm just terrible with schedules.  
> Thanks for anyone who stuck around, hope this chapter isn't too terrible.

There’s a black feathering to Elliott’s eyesight, and it cracks and pops when he turns his head.   
The room he stands in, it’s familiar. On the tip of his tongue. He strains to recall and finds that in his labyrinth of a mind, there’s things missing. They seem important, if the large gaps were anything to go by.  
He looks around, eyes narrowing and lips curling inwards. There’s a bed behind him, sheets a baby blue with splotches of white. It reminds him of the sky. He misses the sky dearly.   
Besides that bed, there’s a nightstand with a clock and a book. The clock is out of batteries. To the other side, a small bookstand, reaching up to only just short of his hip. It’s empty, and covered in marker scribbles.  
The very final thing he notices is a porcelain sink with a vanity and mirror. He walks towards it, something about the scene seeming off in a way. He notices a few things at first glance. The mirror is fogged up so that Elliott can’t see his face, water dripping very slowly into the sink, one of the vanity’s drawers open.   
Almost as if on instinct, he attempts to wipe away the condensation on the mirror, desperation materializing out of thin air. Nothing changes, even as his fingers come back cold and wet.   
He’s frantic then, hands shaking as he practically scratches at the glass, trying over and over again until his fingers feel cracked and bloody, despite not looking the part. He makes a pleading sound, hands still shuddering, centimeters away from the mirror’s surface. 

As if on cue, the fog dissipates on its own, and Elliott Witt is faced with his own, vile reflection.   
His eyes are sunken in, lips cracked and almost white against his grey-tinted skin. The veins in his cheeks are a bruised colour, black and purple with hints of green. The pigmentation stops above his jaw, fading into his repulsive skin.   
He chokes and backs away, but his eyes stay locked on the image and he can only step back so far before he’s stopped by an invisible wall. There’s a scream lodged in his throat somewhere, but before he can let it out, there's a small voice in the back of his head, deathly familiar and like a ringing bell.

“Disgusting.”

Elliott’s eyes widen at that, but his shuddering stops. 

“Loathsome.” 

He nods distantly and takes a step forward again. There's a pounding in his ears, and the vanity drawer is suddenly calling to him in a sweet voice. 

“Sinful.”

Elliott repeats the word in a small voice. In the drawer he finds simply a silver and black straight razor. 

“Corrupt,” the voice chants. Elliott ignores it then, in favor of studying his face in the mirror with distaste. The razor is brought up to his discoloured cheek, blade shimmering attractively.

“Cut it out. Cut it out,” the voice urges. Elliott whispers the phrase. 

“Cut it out.”

The chorus of their voices become a dull roar in Elliott’s ears. 

“Cut it out,” he sobs, and plunges the razor into his face.  
  


Renee crosses her legs, book in her hands feeling a lot like a weight. She rests it on her knee and stretches her arms above her head, joints popping.   
Almost instantly, the whispers in her head become coherent and much louder.   
“He’s awake.”   
She bites her lip and looks up to her left, eyeing the still motionless figure on the bed. Her eyebrows curve downwards a bit, and it shuffles just slightly, a bare foot slipping out from under the blankets before pulling back again.   
A small grin pulls at the corners of her mouth, and she stands up, groaning at the pressure on her lower back. “Elliott,” She murmurs, voice strained a bit. She passes it off as the weariness, and watches the man’s outline in the bed carefully. He stirs, but doesn’t get up.   
“Elliott,” she repeats, louder. He groans and throws his blankets off, making her draw away, startled, if only a bit.  
“Uh.”   
He looks around, seeming confused, and when his eyes settle on hers, she forces that tiny smile back.   
“Why are you here?” He asks, before a yawn engulfs him. His eyes flit down to the floor.  
“Oh. Right.” She looks away uncomfortably and clenches her fingers together, feeling out of place suddenly as if she hadn't had time to think about that when she was sat down for fourty minutes. 

“You passed out last night after saying.. Saying something weird, and Ajay wanted me to make sure you were okay this morning, but you still hadn't waken up by the time I got here so I uh.." She coughs, hairs on the back of her neck bristling. "I waited. Sorry."  
Elliott looks confused at the omission, but he sucks in his bottom lip and keeps quiet, looking lost in thought.   
Finally, as tense silence turns awkward, he gives her a lopsided grin that felt out of place, thanking her and saying he was alright, just having a rough week.   
Renee, despite wanting to do more, felling an obligation somewhere in the theoretical contract she signed when she became friends with the cocky asshole, just nods and turns away. 

A stupid thing to have done in that moment, but she couldn't possibly have known.   
  
  


Three hours, twenty six minutes and seventeen seconds later, Crypto startles awake. His head is on its side, hair falling into his eyes, and he blows it out of the way haphazardly. Powered by instinct, his hand shoots out to grope around his right side for his glasses before he remembers that he left them in the bathroom. That and he wasn't actually in bed..?   
Looking up at his computer screen, he notes that it has shut off, meaning a few things, none of which are very spectacular to think about. This is the case even _more_ when he clicks the display back on and is greeted by a large "fuck you" in the form of the time.   
1:40 in the _afternoon_ , meaning he had fallen asleep god knows when and had missed the entire morning. The rumble in his stomach confirms the fact, with his head pounding in desperation for ibuprofen downed with three glasses of water.  
He curses himself silently for passing up whatever abomination Octane had concocted last night that would have kept him awake for probably _days_ and stands up. This proves to be a bad idea, however, when a sharp pain jolts down his neck, making him have to lean over and bite back a hiss that threatens his lips.

 _If you were going to fall asleep, at least use the damn bed,_ a voice from the left side of his brain bites, and he is inclined to agree. 

When he manages to fight against the pain and stand up like a normal person, the very extent of his brilliant mistake shows its face in full - greasy hair and the smell of not having taken a shower in way too long, as well as a general ache that encased his entire body. He clicks his tongue and leans back over his desk just to turn on a program that he would have to wait for anyway, grabbing his phone while he was there. 

A few minutes, (three?) and he was standing in front of the mirror above the sink, looking himself up and down with disdain. The synthetic parts were waterproof, and yet he always thought about going through the arduous process of taking off the bits that he could. He rationalized that it would make the process of cleaning the skin underneath a lot easier, but it would also be strange of him to do. The others, well. There wasn't any skin there to wash, so that didn't matter. 

He opts for easy, and steps into the hot water that had been running for a while.   
  


There’s nothing soothing about standing in the almost scalding heat anymore. Because that was all it was, really. Standing and having to think, and occasionally getting distracted by shampoo in his eyes. 

Water on the highest heat setting hurts, but thinking hurts more, apparently. 

He leans against the shower wall and lets water hit him on only his left side, memories slipping through handmade walls before they’re suppressed by something proper. 

A face that he hardly recognizes and black liquid the texture of coagulating blood with purple strings of shredded organs. 

His face twists at the thought, stomach lurching suspiciously. He thinks about Elliott, and how he had to have seen the pictures, had to see his mother, assumed last of his family, mauled by something he couldn't put a name to.   
  


Crypto, despite his beating heart’s protests, imagines Mila’s body disfigured in the same way, feeling bile rise in his throat. 

The water runs cold, but his blood is colder.   
  
  
  


Something is wrong in his head, he knows it. This thought comes to him as he now pulls his clothing on, pondering over the own mechanisms of his head. Perhaps when the Syndicate took his sister, they had also taken part of his brain with them. The part that gives him free reign of his thoughts. 

He isn’t in control, hasn’t been in a very long time.   
  


He brushes the thought off as involuntary, a grimace threatening his face as he steps out of the shower and avoids the mirror. 

Something about looking at himself now seems off-putting, so in the past few weeks, he's decided to avoid it almost entirely, (save for moments before showering, as it's always nice to refresh your memory on why you despise yourself) a fruitless effort if only because he was a _fucking apex legend._ His face was up practically everywhere, and his growing popularity didn't help the situation much. 

Still, he muses, it's better to try to ignore it all, because the guilt would eat him alive. 

More time passes, and later, Crypto is sitting back at his desk, chin in his hand, eyes flickering over walls of text. It was nothing of substance, he had already made sure of that yesterday. Still, it wasn't completely worthless. A few memos from one founder of the Syndicate, long ago, presumably before it even carried the all-too familiar name. 

All it really held was contents of the future whoever this person was wanted. Really, it was laughable how sweet the sentiments were. Crypto wonders if, maybe, these documents aren't even real. 

He runs a hand through his still-drying hair, leaning back and letting out a sigh. There's a weird feeling still all over his body, something akin to oil, like maybe he was sweating a substantial amount. 

But he wasn't. It must just be another strange instance of his body playing tricks on him. 

At this, he finally stands up, stretching again and pulling a jacket over himself. With one final glance at the time, he leaves his room, positively annoyed but also desperately ravenous. 

A hundred and something steps later he's in a mock kitchen, avoiding eye-contact with a very _twitchy_ Octane. He thinks that, maybe the feeling's mutual, since the stimmed-up jackass is talking his jaw off but not giving Crypto the time of day, which is _just fine_. 

There's a mess on the counter, globs of purple-reds and what looks to be suspiciously like pancake batter with swirls of green, and he has to supress a gag. 

The easy route would be instant ramen, or leftovers from past meals, both of which are entirely undesirable. But, he doesn't get to be picky. 

Old, somewhat rubbery rice and a mystery meat slathered in worcestershire sauce would have to do. 

Microwaved in a minute and a half and bubbling suspiciously, it's absolutely _delightful_. 

Crypto looks down at the abomination and wants to dump it on the floor, where it looks like it would fit in nicely alongside all the brown and yellow stains. He purses his lips and hugs the meal close to his body, careful to slip away towards the comfort of his room without dropping anything or tripping over his own feet. 

On the way, two doors down his destination, he spots a very tired looking Mirage, and a Wraith just _exuding_ discomfort. 

The woman is leaving the room Crypto vaguely remembers as Mirage's, if the slightly-torn poster on the door has anything to say. He waves her off with a grin not quite meeting his eyes, which is quite uncharacteristic for him, especially in the case of Wraith, probably his closest friend. 

When she is long gone, Mirage slumps over against the doorframe, looking hellishly pained in a way familiar to Crypto in a gut-wrenching way. Brown eyes drift over to his darker, and that horrible feeling is back, rising beyond the confines of his stomach and choking him in the throat. 

He hurries away, careful to _not think, don't think about that_ , because the way the other man had stared at him, long and forlorn was just too much to take in at one moment. 

He mulls over the situation with food passing into his mouth and a computer screen in front of him. The lights give him a headache; they always did, but it was a pleasant distraction from the panic that was always faint inside him. Waiting for him. Calling like birdsong. 

He bites his lip and scrunches his face, trying to focus on the text in front of him that he had been rereading for the past twelve minutes. 

Mirage slowly came to mind, like some sort of destined situation where Crypto has to think about things he really preferred to ignore. That look had been violently familiar, one that punched him with an emotion that felt akin to what he had felt- 

When he had found out Mila had been taken from him. 

He bites his lip hard enough to split the skin and spoil any new bite of food, fingers curling into too-tight fists. 

Out of desperation to calm himself as if reverse psychology had ever worked in his life, a file is opened, and then another, and then finally a picture. 

Elliott Witt's mother's expression was split in three and glued black and blue, but Crypto could vaguely recognize not only agony, but regret. 

The feeling trapped in his chest stirs into a numb feeling, a dull roar, a fucking _scream_.

 _Tae-Joon Park_ slaps hands over his ears and bends over his desk, a shudder engulfing his body frail before he's forced to straighten up when venomous words inside of him snap, desperate for him to keep his cool.  
  


Many hours later, too many to count, (and Crypto certainly doesn't want to count), he's done shaking, finished with grinding his teeth and leaning back too far in his chair with sloppy typing and shudder-stop movements. The bowl he had eaten from lay upside on the floor, little bits of the meal still stuck to the bottom. His eyes drift shut every few seconds, losing focus as more and more time passes, and he thinks he must have worn himself out with stress alone. A shame. 

Standing up suddenly, shakily, he decides on a whim that sleep can wait, getting rid of the bowl and utensils as well as grabbing a well-deserved coffee would have to come first. 

Something about his walk back to the kitchen makes his skin crawl. It's late at night, and most legends are either asleep or probably preparing to do so. His footsteps echo more clearly despite how hard he trys to stop it. The scene brings him back to the days he spent hiding from the Syndicate, freshly wounded in multiple aspects and too shocked to be quite bloodthirsty.  
Oh if only his younger self could see him now.  
The thought is pushed away with disgust; his past was a topic he didn't want to get into while having a dramatic walk down the halls.

The kitchen's lights are turned on as he walks in, a click accompanied by a-  
squeak?  
A particularly _mannish_ squeak.  
He whips his head around and comes face to face with a counter. A counter he steps around and subsequently finds a cowering Mirage.  
The man gives him a pitiful look that quickly turns sour.  
"Aw- Goddamnit of course it's you.. not like.. Lifeline. Or something." His voice is hitched a bit, caught in his throat and reedy. He rubs at his face, very clearly an indication of something Crypto didn't want to think about.  
Instead, he scoffs at the sight and turns on his heel, setting his dishes down to the side and taking a look at the coffee maker. Mirage huffs and presumably stands while Crypto compares poor packaged coffee grounds.  
"Aren't you gonna.. I don't know, make fun of me?"  
The letters on the backs are too hard to read, he picks the blue one over the red because blue is the superior colour. His eyes drift over to Mirage, eyebrow cocked just slightly, passively.  
"Do you want me to?"  
It's meant as a joke, but he's so out of it that the words sound more frustrated than anything. The other man presumably notices, as well, because he gives Crypto a strange look.  
"Not parthi..." He trails off, mispronounciation abandoned, and _this_ , this is cause for concern if nothing else. Crypto eyes him carefully this time, hoping he doesn't come off as too focused, because zeroing into Mirage's face is a death sentence if noticed.  
The man looks anywhere but at Crypto, and that's when it hits him that he's practically mentally interrogating a man who's mother just _died_. His heart sinks in his chest, because oh _god_ he's fallen so far from who he used to be.  
At the realization he quickly turns back to his coffee endeavor and a tiny bit of him hopes Mirage didn't notice the mental turmoil he went through within the span of seven and a half seconds.  
He snorts from his place behind Crypto, before audibly walking away, footsteps all Crypto can hear even though he doesn't want to.  
They're a sullen reminder of how repulsive he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and sorry if it was short. I would link my social media like everyone else except nobody would care and also the only thing i have that isnt my weird art is my plague doctor Tumblr which is.... not something I'd like to discuss.  
> Hope my writing hasn't gotten noticeably worse, and thanks for the love on the last chapter, it was very appreciated.


	3. 2:38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares and terror.

Elliott's not quite sure why he's so disappointed. Maybe it's because his emotions are at a new debilitating high, but Crypto's dismissal actually _stung_. Not as much as it would have had someone like _Wraith_ done it, but still.   
His walk is short, room close enough to the kitchen that it isn't inconvenient, and when he steps inside his entire body fills with a cold grasp of dread. Everything comes back to him in waves of differentiating horror, starting from his mother end ending in the sharp side of a razor. Or course it would. So, as he sits on his bed putting his head in his hands, bile rises in his throat and he feels like _shit_.   
He can't do it, he can't stand being here, it's why he was hiding out in the kitchen. The smell of food and spice was bearable, and the cool, conditioned air calmed the prickling burn under his skin. His room, on the other hand, was sweltering hot, and Elliott occasionally hallucinated the smell of blood. His bed was the worst offender. His blankets were constricting, and him just being on top of it made his brain relay his nightmares, scene by wretched scene.   
He wants to sob all over again, clutching at the sides of his head and squeezing until his hands hurt. Everything is going wrong, everything is awful, and he wants to cry, but his eyes are sore and his chest is constricted. He sniffs and leans over himself, shaking and clutching at his bedsheets in desperation. His head pounds as he loses inhibition is favour of breakage.   
It takes him a few minutes, maybe three, maybe thirty, but when he's done he doesn't feel any better. Just vaguely more exhausted. There's a smell of water damage he keeps picking up, but that fades away if he focuses on it, and he's quite possibly making that up as well. He leans back in the bed, eyes crossing as he looks up at the ceiling, and black spots crowd the edges of everything. They dance when he moves his gaze, like masses of ants crawling over the plaster.   
He smiles a little.   
It brings him back to when he was younger and fascinated with the bugs that crawled around in the backyard. Where his older brothers would stomp on the tiny bugs they saw, he would just watch them crawl around with wide eyes. Sometimes his brothers' reign of terror would get too close, and Elliott would yell at them, accusing them of 'murder' while his mom laughed in the background.   
That voice, the one he cherishes so deeply, fades away in his head until it's replaced by the silence that's engulfing him.   
He falls against his bed, more numb than anything else, and with resingment filling between his joints and the crevices of his brain, Elliott Witt closes his eyes and escapes reality.

He wakes up when Wraith yells at him from across the room.   
He only registers decibels, nothing cohesive since he's muddled up from sleep and partly in ruin. (his ears started ringing a few days ago and he's starting to think he might need to get it checked out, someone in his family had issues with tinnitus. _Someone..._ ) Things start to form, like his vision and hearing again as he comes to properly- there are people around him and a picture frame he doesn't recall existing sits proud on a wall furthest from him.  
"Oh, I think he was sleeping," she says, now presumably closer to him, and he huffs out a laugh, because she sounds genuinely concerned. What a joke. Nevertheless, he opens his mouth a forms words like he's expected to.   
"Sorry, I'm not sure how I managed to do that. You all are.. _so loud_..." He trails off, his sentence echoing. Over and over and over and over and over and-   
Lifeline, standing next to Wraith and leaning on one leg gives him a scrutinizing look. He rolls his eyes, (instinct) and she huffs in response.   
He _knows_ it's an issue, falling asleep suddenly, has been for quite some time. How long has it been exactly? He scrunches up his face while the girls start whispering to eachother. He can't remember, everytime he thinks he's close to the answer it evades him, and he's starting to get frustrated. _He's forgetting something_. Now he's biting his lower lip. Hoping he's got the guts to break the skin and bleed all over himself because he's never done that before, but he's read about people doing it in fiction and such. He wants to be a main character. Wraith would probably be a main character, she's actually interesting. Lifeline could, too, especially if pitted up against him. He's so boring, so sad and pathetic-  
Someone's looking at him while he's thinking. He turns his head and it's Crypto, who's got half a mind to avert his eyes as soon as Elliott notices him. Why's he in the room with him? And why does that make him upset?

It's 2:38, but he's not sure how he knows that. All the clocks are dead, out of batteries.   
Why are they all analog? The Syndicate don't seem like the antique loving sort of people. There's someone he knows that is, however. He just needs to remember who they are.   
Wasn't he already preoccupied with something? He looks right back over at the girls, and they've gone missing. It's just Elliott and Crypto, alone in a room he doesn't recognize. He starts to panic.   
Crypto speaks then, and his voice echoes instantly and violently- Elliott can't understand a word. The noise that leaves Crypto's lips that sounds like it starts with a foreign vowel trails off into a high pitched squeal akin to silverware against ceramic.   
He's got his hands against his ears now, and there are tears dripping down his face. His eyes burn, and so do his lungs, and Crypto's walking toward him slowly, face unreadble and yet utterly familiar, and _he's got to wake up, please god Elliott wake up_.

He startles awake so violently he hits his head against his bedframe.   
Reeling back, cradling his injury, painful tears start to run down his cheeks. The dream hits him in pieces, but all he can remember is _forgetting_ , and the time that mocked him.

2:38.

2:38.

2 hours thirty eight minutes fourty three seconds twenty seven-

Why is this happening to him? Maybe this is his karma, retribution for all the the shitty things he did when he was younger, all the people he hurt with his indecisiveness and self-loathing. Maybe this is how his mother felt, maybe this is what she went through when she was forgetting him and his brothers. Her own sons. She didn't deserve it, but he does. _Absolutely_.  
The pain in his head fades away to a soft ache. His limbs are lead-laden pieces of meat that won't move when he tries. It reminds him of the time he got sleep paralysis when he was just a kid after dreaming about his curtains muffling his screams of terror. He laughs to himself, bitter, because poor little Elliott was in for one hell of a ride.   
He looks around when he's able to properly use his body again, searching for clocks and picture frames instinctively, even though he knows he isn't dreaming. He's got neither of the sort in his room, which is a bit weird because he thinks he'd have at least _something_. In fact, the entire space seems to be empty. Devoid of important things he can't really put his tongue on.   
The posters and figurines of him are still in their supposedly correct places, however, so maybe he's being paranoid. His nose itches, and he sneezes into the crook of his elbow. The skin comes back speckled with black. He stares at it for a few seconds. Thinking.   
The tears threaten to come back, alongside the sinking panic in his chest. His body fills up with cold, like he's injected with liquid nitrogen. He wipes his nose and the tip of it is freezing cold, so much so he's worried it just up and died.   
Maybe all of his extremeties with blacken and die, and he'll be left to rot in his room, forgotten by everyone. They wouldn't forget, would they?  
As he stands to get to the bathroom, he reasons that at the very least, Pathfinder wouldn't forget him. It reassures him just a little, even if it annoys him that it has to be the robot.   
His thoughts and feelings are becoming less tangled the more he goes through little motions- while he's brushing his teeth he makes a point of giving himself a half-hearted smile in the mirror. He's not sure why. He looks half-dead as-is, and the fakeness of the expression makes him look like an idiot.

He focuses on flossing like a lifeline hoping that it'll help him ignore how miserable he is. He can't bring himself to shower, as much as he wants to scrub his sins out of his skin. He can barely keep himself standing anyway, any more expected of him and he might crumble into dust.   
That'd be funny. After a bit of introspection however, he decides that it actually probably wouldn't.   
He leaves the bathroom a little calmer, a bit more grounded. Just enough that he can turn his phone on and check the time. When he does, his body stills.   
It reads 9:99, and his breath catches in his throat, blood running cold all over again.   
There is no possible way he's dreaming again. When you're in a dream you don't know you're in a dream, but you don't know _anything_ either, save for key, random information. Elliott has a good 30 years of knowledge at the forefront of his brain. _It's impossible_.   
And yet his phone sits, screen shut off and taunting him.   
He tries to calm himself before he has another breakdown, because he's too dehydrated to cry all over again and also he just really doesn't want to waste the rest of his energy. He has a schedule going, and if he falls asleep it's just another piece of him unrecoverable and broken to bits. So, he tries. Deep breaths and all that. For good measure, he presses his index and middle finger into the little indent under his palm, right over visible vein. Just little pressure, because Wraith used to say it helped when she was recovering, and although it really didn't do much for him, it was grounding in a way.   
It takes him a while, but he starts to feel just on the teetering edge of alright, so he shakes his head to clear it and grabs his phone again.   
When it's turned on a second time, it boasts a disheartening 9:66, which is an improvement, but also not really.   
He opts to scowl at it, because it's all he can find the energy for. He also restarts it, because maybe it was just a cruel joke. Maybe all of this was just a big elaborate prank on him, except the mom thing because he's pretty sure noone is that big of an asshole. He hopes _to god_ noone is that mean, although he can't quite discredit the murder robot. He doesn't quite think Revenant would go this far though, _especially_ not for Elliott.

A groan escapes his lips when he remembers that even if he isn't going to shower any time soon, he has to at least look presentable. The phone can wait, he's got a moral obligation to be the one legend that looks nice _most_ of the time. And the tacked-on 'most' is only applicable as of recently.   
His thoughts about looking decent brings him back to his run-in with Crypto and he wants to vomit all over the floor. He actually almost gags, which is an expected dramatic for him, but it's also accompanied by a low-seated feeling of horror. _How_ did he let that happen? There are few people he can think of that would have been _worse_ , and one of them is his m-   
He cuts off the thought instantly and violently enough that he physically reacts, digging his nails into his palm. No, he can't think about her right now, he can't break the facáde he's desperately trying to set up before leaving his room. Can't risk another incident.   
Leaning on the wall, he wishes he could be anyone else. 

He walks into the mock living room an imperceptible amount of time later, donning 'casual' wear and a slightly cleaner looking face. The only people in the area when he slumps against a couch are Lifeline and Octane bickering around a TV, and Bangalore, who looks like she just got done with some sort of physical activity. That probably means it _is_ nine in the morning, but he isn't sure of the specifics.   
His focus settles more on the duo nearest to him, because they're loud (and Mirage is on much better terms with both of _them_ rather than Bangalore).   
"-ou said I could, you explicitly _told_ me to, and I can quote you on it, too!"   
"Here we go with the quotes, again. Che, maybe I did say that, except I definitely didn't and you just made it up."   
That makes Elliott snort a little, and Lifeline whips around and glares at him.   
"Don't give him attention, Witt, he gets too much o' it already."   
The man just shrugs in response, and she turns back to Octane. Not without giving Elliott an annoyed look first, though.   
He can't even discern what they're talking about- it's abstract and for some reason 'mages' keeps being brought up, which makes him think it might be about a game, but he can't be quite sure because Octane's speaking so fast he's running out of breath and Lifeline's accent becomes almost incomprehensible to Elliott when she gets fired up.   
Still, it's a nice change of pace. Something more in line with a reality that isn't messed up and rotting. And oh hey, the time on his phone is working again, and what do you know, it's 9:38. He sinks into the couch and feels a bit of tranquility slip over him, deciding from now on, he's a morning person, and most certainly not a night one. _Especially_ when Octane waves his hands around so aggressively he smacks himself in the face, and Lifeline laughs so hard she looks like she's going to cry.   
Yes, as long as he's only awake at daylight, he'll be perfectly fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it wasn't too short, next chapter will have actual stuff happen. (Including interactions between Mirage and Crypto. Y'know. Like what y'all mostly came here for.)  
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
